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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36418 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Anarchism only ever really developed a mass following in two countries: Russia and Spain. There were anarchist movements all across the western world, but they only rarely managed to put down the kinds of roots among the workers that more 'mainstream' socialist parties/movements did. The SPD in Germany, the SFIO in France, Labour in England. Socialism seemed a much more reasonable philosophy to most workers. Even while theoretically advocating a future classless socialist society, socialist politicians and activists also worked within the system to improve conditions here and now. Another thing is that socialism took root among industrial workers while anarchism tended to be more popular among poor peasants. Socialism was, at least ostensibly, a much more 'scientific' philosophy while anarchism was much more romantic and primitive in instinct. Marxist theory and analysis were taken very seriously by many of the most learned, intelligent people of this period, while anarchism never was. It had a rigor that anarchism lacked, which endeared it to intellectuals and the increasingly secularized urban working classes alike. That is probably a big part of the reason anarchism did not endure, besides those enumerated elsewhere in the thread, is that its intellectual foundations were much shakier than those of marxist socialism.

What Spain and Russia had in common were that they were two of Europe's least industrialized, poorest countries. Anarchism proved very popular among uneducated and deeply impoverished landless rural workers who adhered to it basically as if it was a religion. In the south of Spain the tenets of anarchism essentially replaced Catholicism among the braceros (regular church attendance had collapsed to something like 5% of the population in Andalusia in the 30s). They had the idea of "the Revolution" as like the coming of Christ, one singular event after which there would be heaven on earth.

Anarchism was wiped out in Russia by the Bolsheviks. It peaked in Spain in the 1930s at the outbreak of the Civil War. The anarchists blew a lot of their credibility with the base by collaboration with the republican government, and whatever was left was destroyed by the Franco victory.

What Spain and Russia had in common were that they were two of Europe's least industrialized, poorest countries.

Extremely good point. Anarchism has a bit of a flavor to "leave me alone to go back to what I was doing," which if you're a rural farmer at least does mean sustaining yourself. If you live in a city and already depend on an industrial ecosystem for food and goods, and all the available jobs are industrial in nature, then the most realistic improved scenario is one much the same but with better working and living conditions.

The rest of your post makes me think I really need to read more on Spanish anarchists, I had no idea the movement literally usurped religion in places.

Spain in the early 20th century is very fascinating. Gerald Brennan's The Spanish Labyrinth is old but a good overview of the conditions that ultimately produced the civil war, including the popularity of anarchism in the south. An excerpt:

The character of the rural anarchism that grew up in the south of Spain differed, as one would expect, from that developed in the large cities of the north. 'The idea', as it was called, was carried from village to village by Anarchist 'apostles'. In the farm labourers' gañanias or barracks, in isolated cottages by the light of oil candiles, the apostles spoke on liberty and equality and justice to rapt listeners. Small circles were formed in towns and villages which started night schools where many learned to read, carried on anti-religious propaganda and often practised vegetarianism and teetotalism. Even tobacco and coffee were banned by some and one of these old apostles whom I knew maintained that, when the age of liberty came in, men would live on unfired foods grown by their own hand. But the chief characteristic of Andalusian anarchism was its naive millenarianism. Every new movement or strike was thought to herald the immediate coming of a new age of plenty, when all even the Civil Guard and the land owners would be free and happy. How this would happen no one could say. Beyond the seizure of the land (not even that in someplaces) and the burning of the parish church, there were no positive proposals.

Thanks for the added info, I’ll definitely have to check that book out

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